


Beyond the Sea

by destronomics



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(4x03 coda) Mary Campbell and the few loose ends she has to tie up first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Sea

**

Athens, Tennessee

_There's a motel that's been stiffed rent for three nights but that's not why he's pointing a gun at John. The guy is spitting mad, more than. He pulls a gun on John and tells him under no uncertain terms what he aims to do with it next._

John apologizes, says he's sorry for the man's loss, he swears it.

The grip around the gun loosens and he says no one would understand, no one could. Bastard said he could help and I believed him. Then she came. Made sure no one could help after that and if John is looking for her, then he'll just, he's gonna, he swears it, he will--

"I just wanted her to get better," is what he says instead, "How can that be a bad thing?"

**

So she runs.

**  
   
When she looks down, John is blinking at her like he's working out water from under his eyelids; throat working like he's gagging on the stuff too. He looks scared and he looks confused and he looks--  
   
But mostly Mary is looking at his hand, gripping hers, warm. It was warm before, but there's intent in the way his skin presses against hers, not just gravity keeping him with her and holding her in place.  
   
She wants to sob but it's easier not to; shouldn't be as easy it is with her father cold and still beside her because he's been dead for hours judging by the clouding in his eyes. And because Dad also taught her how to breathe when this fucking scared, she does that too.  
   
"Mary--?"  
   
She wraps her arms around his shoulders, helps him sit up; she feels his chest move against her own because he's breathing and _oh_\--  
   
Mary moves her hand out from under his, and onto his neck, counting the vertebrae under warm skin, solid and unbroken. She runs the protocol through her head. It can vary _burning, salt, beheading, Latin, there are rules for this sort of thing for a reason_ and she needs to be sure.

She can feel him flinch against her neck -- either her hand must be cold or. Or maybe his head is angled in a way, with eyes finally open, so that he can see her father's corpse at their feet; that could be it too. 

She tries to remember how it is to be new at this and so scared it takes conscious effort to breathe steady; tries to remember so she can account for John's fear before it becomes a problem. 

But John is hyperventilating, and that helps too: panting, warm breath worms its way down her shirt, and gripping him steady means tightening her fingers and where her thumb rests there's blood, moving.  
   
The hand around the hilt of the knife tucked against her ankle, releases. She stops thinking about cutting off John's head with the silver blade. She stops thinking of dragging his body into the Impala. She stops thinking of salting and burning the whole thing in the quarry 12 miles on the outskirts of town. She stops thinking.  
   
She can still see it, even after holding John's face steady to tell him "It's okay, breathe for me, it's okay," and listening to him rattle and shake and begin with _what happened, who did this, Mary are you all right, Mary, god, Mary._

She still sees it: the pyre bright and familiar and easy, so much easier if--

**

It takes her a few more blocks to realize that she's got his jacket around her shoulders. The nurse had handed it to her when they slipped John into the hospital gown, and Mary had gripped it against her chest the entire time through the exam. The doctor had insisted John was fine but Mary, coward that she is ("You know me," and his relieved grin, because he really thinks he does, she can see it; Dad said she was born for this), insisted that John checked in, get checked out, _just to be sure_.  
   
It is so easy to lie to him, so easy. Mary's got plenty of practice, but still, why does he have to make it so easy?     
   
He doesn't argue and maybe he thinks she will be there in the morning, curled up in the plastic grip of the waiting room chair, breathing easier because they had monitored him through the night. John really had felt fine, he wouldn't lie about that, so she didn't have to worry; she doesn't have to worry. Maybe that's what he's thinking and Mary's going to let him go right on thinking that.  
   
By the time John is admitted into the ER, it has to have been a day and a half since his last, real shave. The skin around his mouth rough from dirt and stubble, and the sound of it, the rasp as it drags along the skin of her cheek is enough to make her gag. Almost. John's got a hand at her neck, thumb just below her ear like she likes, so she can't move, can't go anywhere, she's stuck.

Panic hits her chest and floods her ears and he must have felt something, because he squeezes -- and Mary shudders so hard the kiss breaks clean through.

John looks at her and he looks scared and Mary's almost glad. Safer to leave him this way, if John's scared. Alert.

Mary runs. John's going to find his mother waiting for him in the morning, and he's going to be fine. He's going to be fine. He's going to hate her for leaving and he's going to be _fine_.

**  
   
There's still the matter of the body. Her father's body. John thinks he's killed him, at first. "Did I--"  
   
"No, god no, no, no." Mary pushes the hair off his forehead and then leaves her hand on his cheek. "You-- you tried to. There was--" and it kills her to do this but, "There was a man, do you remember? Dean."  
   
John blinks at her slowly, slotting the name into place with the man that had been on both of them like a shadow the whole week. She watches him turn it over in his head until it makes a kind of sense.  
   
His eyes dull, "I should have--"  
   
"You did, you kept me _safe_." The word coats her mouth. "You saved me."  
   
He believes her and Mary tries not to think less of him for it.

He lets her help him into the car with an arm around her shoulder and face turned into her neck. His breathing is shallow and she can feel him swallow because something hurts inside that he can't put a name to. She hates that she used to be so, stupid, giddily glad for it, all the hurt John didn't have a name for because he was the normal she craved.  
   
She sets him up in the passenger seat, and pulls out the little flask from her back pocket she should hate herself for packing in the first place, but can't, not really. Wetting her sleeve, she sets it against his forehead and asks again if he's okay, if anything hurts. She whispers _christo_ between _tell me_ and _John please_ and--  
   
John doesn't flinch, but her hand must be trembling because he puts his own over hers, and tells her he's okay, _it's going to be all okay, Christ Mary, I swear._  
   
Like the knife, the flask of holy water is something she would have left at home if she really believed this could be hers. She was lying to herself then, and she's lying to John now and it has to stop somewhere. It has to.  
   
Mary drives with John's hand laced through hers over her shaking knee.   
   
**

Buckeye, Arizona

_"Two weeks. Twice as many tips too. Until."_

John can't picture her anywhere near a place like this, and it's beginning to become a bad habit, how little John's able to picture about Mary. Says instead, "Until?"

The man shrugs but the dirty rag he's wiping across the bar stays its course.

"Damndest thing though." And he looks at John expectantly. This, at least, he still understands. Last twenty he's got right now, but he can get more.

The man grins and the towel starts up again, as does his story, about how a week and a half in, there's a dead kid in his parking lot and the police milling through his bar with the lights all turned up. That they find a shotgun under the bar that's not his, a wicked looking knife above the lip of the walk-in fridge door, and a fold-out pallet in the store room where he's only supposed to be keeping crates of beer and bags of pretzels, like someone was living back there. "And salt, practically everywhere, all over the place."

"And?"

"And nothing. Musta split the night before. Like I said. Can't tell you much else."

**  
   
Dad's truck is still in the drive when she gets home. Hands on her thighs, Mary sucks in air from the cold around her and stares at it just sitting there, parked like it usually is with the truck bed facing the canopy of the garage, the shade from the tree almost a solid black at night. Mom had demanded it, said the putting-in-some-hardwood-flooring excuse could only fly for so long.  
   
Mom loved being a hunter; loved it. Said she could be a housewife or a nurse or a teacher, but Samuel didn't doubt she was born for this, and Mom would talk like hunting could be the answer to everything. Mary was just tired of hearing how lucky she was.  
   
Past the truck and into the house, and Deanna's body is on the hardwood floor, mouth slack and eyes still open. Mary checks for a pulse anyway but the skin is cold under her fingers and it helps, actually, for what comes next.  
   
She turns the body over to get better access to the back pocket that holds a copy of the keys for the truck. Didn't have her wits together to take them off Dad's body back in the field, and Mary's halfway through the thought of thanking god Mom's always prepared for emergencies before she's gagging with it too.  
   
From the hall closet by the door, she pulls out a length of rope, a horse-hair brush, and it's only then does she see the bloodied knife on the living room floor. She makes a note of it then grabs the sawed-off shotgun and shuts the closet again. The gun of the grip is familiar enough that her heart rate steadies.  
   
She turns the patio lights off, steps outside and locks the door.

**  
   
Her father's body is still in the dirt where she made John leave him, stomach black. Pulling him into the truck bed isn't hard because she's had the practice, Samuel made sure of that too, plenty of lugging dead weight around, like dirt and coffin lids, salt bags and lyme.  
   
She secures the body down so it doesn't shift during the drive; family of hunters and she tied her shoes with sailor knots for four years before anyone showed her another way.  
   
With the broom she swipes dirt over the Impala's tire treads, John's footprints as he stumbled back to the car, her own and Dad's. Tucking the tip of her knife into the dirt, Mary cuts out the blood that had congealed into paste and scoops it into a canvas bag that goes with the body. She'll come back for Dean's car.  
   
It's only climbing back in the truck with the body in the back and tarp pulled over, that Mary realizes how far back the car seat is to make room for her father's legs.  
   
Her fist connects with the dash so hard it kicks the switch for the radio over to the AM. An old standard filtered through the static and noise, and everything is so sudden and loud and unexpected it should be enough drown the sound of her heart thudding hard in her chest.  
   
It doesn't. And louder than the thundering in her chest is everything she knows about the static, white noise and EMF, of ghosts and the restless dead begging to be put down and she hates her dad so much, her mother even more, everyone, everyone, _everything_\--  
   
She will need an accelerant, both for the bodies and the house. And the truck.  
   
The fuel gauge says the tank is half full and there are three 5-pound bags of rock salt still in the pantry. That should be enough; she can make it enough.  
   
Mary breathes out.  
   
**  
   
Gravity kicks in when she's got the body half off the truck bed, and he would have almost taken her down the rest of the way to the ground if Mary wasn't prepared. As it is, a quick grunt and a wrench of her shoulder and she gets most of him upright again, enough to begin dragging in earnest, hands hooked under armpits and looped tight around the chest.  
   
Boot heels catch on the outcroppings of brick along the back path as she drags the body in. The street is so quiet this time of night with everyone asleep that the sound carries until it echoes back.  
   
**  
   
Her mother is where Mary left her, head lolling to the side, eyes gleaming in the dark of the house along with the brass handles of the kitchen cabinets and the dishes in the sink. Mary leaves her father in the living room, next to the bloodstain on the floor by the far wall, near the knife.  
   
It's not even silver, just one of the kitchen ones, and maybe her mother might have been cooking, might never suspected a thing, that maybe what did this to Mom was something that she could have thought could still be Samuel, inside. Not silver against possession, not iron for spirits, just a steel paring knife from a set Mary doesn't remember them ever getting because it had always just been there.  
   
She leaves it where it is and moves back into the kitchen, hands free again.  
   
   
**

Broken Bow, Nebraska  
_  
"It wasn't him anymore, you understand?"_

John nods and he's lying. He doesn't understand a damn thing, that's becoming clear, but he's getting better at not letting it show, so he keeps nodding.

She tells him a story that ends with her youngest son dead in a town three states over, with soot lining his mouth and a wound two weeks old, and a mother who doesn't understand, can't understand, how something like this could happen to her family.  
  
**  
   
There is a small paper folio taped under the sink where Mom liked to keep most of the family's fake IDs and birth certificates and anything else needed to obtain alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and firearms. In case of emergencies, Dad had said, just a precautionary measure.

"I smell anything on your breath, girl, and I swear to--" But Dad had been grinning because Mary was his girl, and look how big she'd gotten, just look at her.

Empty threats, another family specialty. _I'll kill you, I swear to God._

John had one himself, in his older brother's name but with John's face, sixteen and young and amusingly grim and Mary had laughed because all this to be old enough just to buy cigarettes? Not even booze? And John didn't even smoke.  
   
Which is when Mary learned about why his father hated hippies so much and how a whole continent could be spineless and weak and "Don't ever mention Canada around my Dad, Mary, trust me on this."  
   
John's parents had been furious, convinced their son was too young, too _stupid_, to have any idea of what he was really signing up for. They had probably been right, John had grinned after the recounting, but not like he'd ever tell them that. He's got a niece now, a little girl no older than two and John can't sleep through a night without shaking himself awake but he's got little Rebecca's picture in his wallet and whenever he shows her off it's like his voice hollows out, he's so damn proud.

Mary always wanted something like that, an older or younger sibling or _anything_, anyone who could understand what it was like, why she needed to leave so bad. It hadn't occurred to her that they could be something that gets left behind, and more than anything -- standing in the unlit kitchen of her family home with a sink full of dirty dishes -- Mary is glad it's just her, now, here.  
   
Three steps take her to the stovetop, and Mary flips each dial on high. By the time she's ready, the house will be ready.  
   
Mary sifts through the folio, picks out the names it wouldn't take a half-beat to recognize as her own, and lays the rest next to her mother's body in the kitchen. Two more steps takes her to the pantry, to the bag of salt with a cup already inside, ready for measuring and scooping. 

Two cups a body, sprinkled over cooking oil to get it to stick.  
   
**  
   
There are family photos on shelf by the stairs, a set of heirlooms from her mother's side in a box in the closet by their bedroom. There's a weapons cache in the basement and a library of hunter texts in the study. She could take all of them, she wants to take all of them -- stuff them into the back of the truck where her father's body used to be, step down on the gas and drive and drive and drive. But John is fine, better than, the demon is good to his word so the doctors will find nothing and John loves Mary, stupid little girl that she is, and will come looking for her, make sure she's all right. There isn't time. There just isn't any time.  
   
There's always a set of clothes in the truck, along with a rifle and an envelope of petty cash, easier to bribe your way into crime scenes, coroner's offices, graveyards with. Everything you need, Mom always thought of everything. Dad was the brute force, but Mom liked to make sure they didn't have to use any and god.  
   
It's the gas making her feel this slow, off her game. Must be. 

**  
   
She doesn't have to go anywhere; doesn't have to explain anything. She could just sit right here on the kitchen floor, back against the cabinet sink, flip her lighter and--  
   
**  
   
Shoshane, California

_"Shit don't. Don't." Maybe her shoulders are shaking, but he can't tell because she's drowning in his jacket. There's a line of black down her jaw and dipping into the shadows of the jacket along her neck. "It's over, so just don't. You don't have to."_

He settles beside her on the ground. The dirt's more clay than anything else, cool from the night and California desert stretches out in front of them both. John doesn't know what to do now because this is what he wanted, this is what he came for, so he can wait, he can do that much for her at least.

Fingers digging trenches into the ground, Mary's back shaking under his jacket and the sun a long, faint line in the horizon, John can wait. He's good at that now.

**

The house burns and Mary's not in it. That's something, right? That's a step.

She's got her momma's gun and her daddy's truck.

There's plenty she can do.

**

_After a while, John notices something._

"Are you... are you laughing_?"_

Mary's face, when she finally turns it to him -- and it's been a year and too many days and the last time he saw that face, it was on posters with the prime suspect of a fire that took two lives and it's an awful story, just awful, ask anyone -- and yeah, Mary is grinning because yeah, she's laughing now. Or was.

Now she's just grinning. John blinks.

"Long story," Mary says instead. "Lets go home."

**


End file.
